Nostalgia’s Healing Power

11/24/2023

Nostalgia is a wistful, bittersweet emotion. It can arise any time you
recall moments that helped define the person you’ve become….
Although nostalgia blends happiness with sadness, it typically brings
up positive feelings…. (Renew, Fall/Winter 2023, p. 22)

…(It) also has mental health benefits…. Thinking about key moments from your past might help you feel better about yourself, your relationships and the trajectory that your life has taken. (Renew, p. 20)

So, Renew Magazine (only available to members of a United Health Advantage plan) tells us that nostalgia increases “self-esteem, optimism, social connectedness, self-continuity, and meaning in life.” Well, I don’t doubt that nostalgia is psychologically beneficial; but lately, I’ve experienced its “sadness” downside. I’ve been trying to re-connect with long-lost friends and mentors. I’ve had one notable success, finding my old Classics professor, Karl Galinsky, on Facebook.     However, when I looked for Dr. John G. Bordie, who supervised my Master’s Report, I discovered that he had died several years ago. When I looked for my college roommate and friend, Jack Burns, I was shocked to find that he too had died recently.

There are many nostalgic moments that I can recall with Jack. However, perhaps the most poignant was when we stayed up all of a chilly night and—using my 6-inch reflector telescope—observed Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. As regards Dr. Bordie, I can’t forget his revelation that I had made a presentation in a linguistics class unconsciously speaking English with a Spanish accent.

A recent event that evokes nostalgia is the welcoming party that Old Chatham members gave me when I joined the Meeting. Really, I feel unalloyed joy when I look at pictures of my wife and myself together with Bill and Bev Thompson, Don and Merry Lathrop, Farid Gruber and Rebecca McBride, together with many others, eating lunch on the outside porch of the Meeting House during the Covid Pandemic. The tinge of sadness that comes with the memory is the realization that the Meeting is not always so completely united in love as on that day.

So, if you want to dig out old school yearbooks or old photo albums, go ahead. If you feel nostalgic about the past, any tinge of sadness will surely give way to joy.

~ Richard Russell

2 Comments

Joseph Olejak

11/26/2023 08:32:47 am

One emotion that did not get mentioned regarding nostalgia is that it often arises with regret.

This past thanksgiving all I had was feelings of regret. And not regret in the sense of having done something wrong, but the other definition of "sorrow for the loss of absence of something."

Both my parents have passed. My mother, the glue that kept the family together always made a big deal of thanksgiving. I loved it precisely because it was about gratitude and not gift giving. My children are grown and gone. The wonderful feeling of nostalgia I used to enjoy around thanksgiving is over.

I can try to resurrect the past but that seems like a fools errand. The past is the past and it is done and dusted. Nostalgia may feel good for a fleeting moment but it does not really allow me to move on and build new structures in my life that may be fulfilling.

That is the query for the third trimester of life.

If nostalgia is to be a "healthy emotion" then I think it needs to come with some actions. The feelings of “self-esteem, optimism, social connectedness, self-continuity, and meaning in life" as the Renew article mentioned may only stick if there is a new and healthy social context.

Richard S Russell

11/27/2023 08:52:12 am

Well said, Joseph. Nostalgia is balanced on the knife edge of positivity and negativity. It may well slip into regret and sadness.
Possibly you're right about action or social context being necessary to making nostalgia a cause for happiness. I suppose we could speak of "good" and "bad" nostalgia.

Richard

Nostalgia’s Healing Power

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